Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with massive street demonstrations against kleptocratic despots in Hungary and Serbia

and discuss when and if similar people power protests could and should erupt here in the United States

to unseat our despots and kleptocrats, Trump and Musk.

Joining us is Marcy Shaw, a professor of history at Yale University,

who teaches the intellectual history of 20th and 21st century Central and Eastern Europe.

She's the author of Caviar and Ashes, A Warsaw Generations Life and Death in Marxism, 1918 to 1968,

The Taste of Ashes, the Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe,

and The Ukrainian Night, An Intimate History of Revolution, Now Out in an Updated Edition.

Her forthcoming book is In Pursuit of Certainty Lost, Central European Encounters on

the Way to Truth. Then we'll look into the much-anticipated phone call yesterday between Trump

and Putin, which was delayed for an hour as Putin played his usual psychological game of

dominance and disrespect. Joining us to discuss the Russian media's portrayal of the call as a great victory for Putin

as Russia is invited back into the cold without paying any price is Michael Gorham,

Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Florida.

He is the author of two award-winning books on Russian language, culture and politics,

after newspeak, language, culture and politics in Russia from Gorbachev to Putin,

and speaking in Soviet tongues, language culture, and the politics of voice in revolutionary Russia.

He's currently completing his third book,

Networking Putinism,

The Rhetoric of Power in the Digital Age,

...